This invention relates in general to nail making apparatus and deals more particularly with an improved machine for making wire nails.
Machines of the aforedescribed type heretofore available generally include a wire feeding mechanism for intermittently advancing an end portion of an axially elongated wire in an axial direction to a point of operation where the wire is gripped and held in spaced relation to its end by opposing jaws while a reciprocally movable crank driven ram strikes a blow to the projecting end of the wire to form a nail head thereon. During the return stroke of the ram the wire gripping jaws open to release the wire which is further advanced by the wire feeding mechanism. Before the ram completes its return stroke, a pair of opposing cutting and pointing tools move into engagement with opposite sides of the wire to form a nail point on the wire to finish a nail and simultaneously sever the finished nail from the wire. It is necessary that the stroke of the ram be somewhat greater than the length of a finished nail to accommodate the tooling required to perform the nail pointing and severing operation.
The finished nail, which drops from the machine, may be guided into a container by a chute or the like. Preferably, a sweeping mechanism is provided which moves through the region between the gripping jaws and the ram after each nail is formed to assure that the finished nail has cleared the path of the returning ram. Since both the heading and the pointing and severing operations are performed at the same workstation, metal chips produced by the severing or cutting off operation will drop into the container with the finished nails and must be separated from the nails by a further tumbling operation or the like.
The relatively long stroke of the ram coupled with the high inertia developed by the ram and its relatively heavy crank mechanism during each operating cycle produces considerable bearing shock, a high degree of wear and generally unacceptably high noise levels. Further, the long ram stroke required to finish each nail limits the maximum attainable production speed of the machine.
The present invention is concerned with the aforedescribed general problems. Specifically, it is the general aim of the invention to provide an improved high speed nail making machine which operates at a relatively low noise level and delivers collated nails free of metal chip contamination, thereby eliminating need for additional chip separating and collating operations while facilitating additional cleaning and packaging operations as the collated finished nails leave the machine, should such additional operations be desired.